If It's Hip, It's Here (Archives): artsy baked goods

Showing posts with label artsy baked goods. Show all posts

Art Fund Cooks Up A Clever Way To Help UK Museums and Galleries

above: Photographs by Maja Smend, food styling by Kim Morphew, prop styling by Lydia Brun

A new fundraising initiative from the Art Fund encourages art lovers to create edible masterpieces with all funds raised going toward helping UK museums and galleries.

Thirty-year-old metal designer Alisa Toninato, who as been featured on Martha Stewart, creates handmade substantial and beautiful examples of craftsmanship with iron skillets in the shape of each of the 48 contiguous United States.

above: Alisa with her Wisconsin skillet

Her Madison, Wisconsin studio named FeLion (that's FE, the chemical symbol for Iron and Lion represents the sign, Leo, under which the artist was born) creates iron art that is a functional example of a design concept blended with utility.

Every state-shaped skillet from her Made In America collection, is labeled with the FeLion Studios logo on the back, and stamped with a production number. The iron skillets can be shipped "raw" or "seasoned" and come with a custom made magnetic hanger for display.

All pans are made to order, and will be shipped in a timely fashion after the day its poured, approximately 6-8 weeks from the day of order. Please contact the artist for multiple state-pan orders. Also, visit the “Geographic Compositions” page for examples of several skillets composed into regional maps, such as the Midwestern set shown below.

A 2005 graduate of the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, Alisa Toninato's credits include an internship with Chicago public artist Jin Soo Kim & experience as a thematic sculptor with the design & fabrication firm Cost of Wisconsin building zoo & aquarium habitats.

Her full map consisting of 48 contiguous state-skillets of America (above) was part of the 2011 ArtPrize exhibition in Grand Rapids Michigan, and made it into the top 25 among artists in the Center City neighborhood.

Buy the skillets here
or at the following retailers:
All Through the House (Stoughton, WI)
Bekah Kate's (Baraboo, WI)
BRAISE RESTAURANT ~ !!! ( Milwaukee, WI )
Cornacopia (Sturgeon Bay, WI)
Duluth Trading Co.
Kitchen Gallery (Madison, WI)
Kitchen Window (Minneapolis, MN)
Volume One (Eau Claire, WI)

When You Hunger For Modern Design. Baked Goods Almost Too Beautiful To Eat.

Modern Bite has transformed cookies, cupcakes and cakes into art you can eat. The Los Angeles Bakery combines the design talents of Greg Roth with the baking expertise of Daniel Shapiro resulting in some of the most beautiful and sophisticated desserts you've ever seen.

Flavor options, design options, custom versions and boxed assortments of their baked goods are available both locally and shipped via Fed Ex. If you are looking for a memorable way to satisfy both your eyes and stomachs, Modern Bite bakery is the place.

Their shortbread cookies come in the three design collections shown below or single versions of the nine beautiful options.

Also available are an array of eight gourmet cookies, ranging from classic Chocolate Chip to Tofu Peanut Pretzel Cookies.

Cupcakes are available in three different modern design versions with your choice of chocolate. vanilla or red velvet cake and your choice of chocolate or cream cheese frosting:

Fondant cakes for birthdays, holidays and any other occasion are available in beautiful modern designs or custom versions. Here are a few of my favorites:

Classic cakes include carrot, vanilla salted caramel, chocolate, red velvet, vanilla birthday cake and a dobosh torte.

all images and info courtesy of Modern Bite

MODERN BITE puts an innovative design spin on mouth-wateringly delicious desserts. With a focus on delectable taste and texture and impeccable detail and artistry, the Los Angeles-based bakery brings the highest caliber ingredients and individualized customer service to its uniquely styled baked treats.

Creations from the MODERN BITE kitchen are the culmination of its partners’ passions and backgrounds.

At age 14, Daniel Shapiro parlayed his love of baking into a small business making and selling cakes to restaurants in his native Montreal. After earning an MBA from The Wharton School, he dedicated over twenty years to the branding and marketing of renowned entertainment and lifestyle companies.

As MODERN BITE’s visual tastemaker, Greg Roth draws on his fine art and architecture studies at Brown University and the Southern California Institute of Architecture, as well as two decades of experience designing restaurants and private residences.

MODERN BITE

Pantone Color Chip Cookies! Kim Neill Bakes Up Deliciously Divine Design.

Freelance designer and illustrator Kim Neill was inspired to turn Pantone color chips into edible cookies after finding the Pantone color tins by Seletti at a nearby art supply store.

above: Kim Neill with her fabulous Pantone Chip cookies in the Pantone Tins, above right

As a holiday gift for her clients, she filled the tins with rectangular sugar cookies topped with colored icing and used an edible marker to indicate the PMS colors.

Kim even made METALLIC pantone chips. Using bottles of silver and gold edible luster dust to rush atop the icing, she created cookies in PMS Metallic Silver 877, Gold 871 and Pink 8062.

The cookies in the tins were a huge hit with her clients. The faves? Seems that the PMS 485, PMS 183 and Silver 877 were the most popular.

How to make Kim's brilliant PANTONE CHIP COOKIES:

FOR THE DOUGH:
She used Mary’s Sugar Cookie recipe from the Betty Crocker cookbook. Super tasty. Recipe here.

Roll dough out between 1/4” and 1/8“ thickness. Thinner cookies keep their shape better. Cut 2” x 2.5” rectangles out of dough (using a stencil from cardboard may make it easier). Cook until lightly golden brown, keeping an eye on them as they cook because they cook quickly.

Note: If you are filling a Pantone Tin, three batches of cookies will only fill up the tin halfway. They are big tins, so to resolve this, Kim ended up lining the bottom of the tin with folded over bubble wrap to make the tin appear full.

An alternative to the tin would be to fill with Pantone mugs with the cookies, which make for a nice individual gift. Purchase the Pantone Storage Tins or the Pantone Mugs for your cookies.

FOR THE ROYAL ICING:
This is a great recipe to use because it keeps color vibrant, doesn’t fade and dries nice without being too hard. Flavor with white vanilla here if you can. Regular vanilla tends to darken the icing a bit. You might want to add a bit more milk then the recipe calls for to get the perfect spreading consistency. Recipe found here.

DECORATING THE COOKIES:
Make a big bowl of white royal icing. Start by spreading a strip of white icing across the all the cookie bottoms and let dry. Now use what’s left of your white icing to make colors.

Scoop 3-4 heaping tablespoons of icing in a tiny bowl and then color with solid food coloring. This will color 3-5 cookies. Once you are done with one color, rinse your bowl out and start again. Doing colors this way keeps the mess down and you don’t have to worry about what you just mixed drying out. Using a food dye pen, write the matching [or closest] PMS number down on the cookies.

Kim used Gourmet Food Writers, available for purchase here. To make the Metallic Chips, use a soft brush or cotton ball to burnish icing surface with gold or silver luster dust, available for purchase here.

all images and recipes courtesy of Kim Neill.

Design You'll Just Eat Up! Cakes by Kate Sullivan

Above: The Warhol Cake

Above: The Mod Cake

Kate Sullivan of Lovin Sullivan Cakes makes the most amazing cakes I have ever seen.I'm not sure I could bring myself to eat them! I simply had to share a few of her edible masterpieces with you, but you can see them all and learn more about Lovin Sullivan Cakes here.